It’s trendy on college campuses to denounce traditional masculinity as “toxic”– but it turns out, women kinda like a manly man, a new Florida State University study suggests.
The researchers tracked 70 newlywed couples over two weeks, querying women to rate their levels of satisfaction with their husband.
Meanwhile, the men were asked to rate their “behavioral masculinity,” a category that included feelings of dominance, power and assertiveness—all traits that campus feminists have decried as “toxic” and dangerous.
A University of Maryland staffer recently claimed in a blog post that “societal ideas about masculinity (like sexual prowess, dominance, financial stability, risk-taking and the “Man Card”) create an environment that encourages—or is at least passively complicit in—sexual violence against women, and isolates and invalidates male survivors of sexual assault.”
San Francisco State University also linked these traits to rape in a recent post on men’s health: “Whether it’s being told to ‘man up’ or being told that men should be the ‘breadwinner,’ our society tells us men should exert power. While the vast majority of men will never commit sexual violence, studies show that those who do commit sexual violence strongly believe in these attitudes.”
Similarly, the University of Minnesota’s Aurora Center for Advocacy and Education recently urged men to develop “healthy masculinity” that “acknowledges the fluidity of gender beyond male and female.”
But far from being poisoned by toxic masculinity, wives with traditionally manly husbands actually enjoyed a spike in marital satisfaction during their peak fertility days. Women with less masculine husbands got no such extra bump.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Steamboat Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum.